1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to an integration system and the method for operating the same. More particularly, the present invention relates to a mixing-and-matching method and an integration system for providing backup strategies for optical environments and the method for operating the same.
2. Description of Related Art
With the semiconductor manufacturing technology trending towards a node size of about 130 nm or even below 130 nm, the demands for an optical environment, such as scanner, possessing high numerical aperture (NA) is increased since the optical environment with higher NA possesses better resolution even though pitch dimension variation is getting small. However, the scanner is very expensive, not to mention a scanner with a relatively high NA. Hence, most of the time, there is only one scanner with the relative high NA in a semiconductor manufacturing factory. Therefore, once the scanner with the relative high NA is breakdown, the throughput of a production line using this breakdown scanner will be seriously affected. It is important to find out a backup tool/scanner for the primary tool/scanner in case the primary tool/scanner is down.
Conventionally, in order to matching the behavior of the critical dimension on the developed photoresist/the etched process layer formed over the wafer (DCD/ECD) under the primary optical environment having high NA to the behavior of DCD/ECD under the backup optical environment having low NA, the optimal NA of the primary optical environment is sacrificed and the NA of the primary optical environment is tuned down to a middle NA to accommodate the DCD/ECD performance under the primary optical environment to the DCD/ECD performance under the backup optical environment. Nevertheless, under this circumstance, the primary optical environment with a middle NA cannot show the optimal performance that it should be. Hence the resolution of the primary optical environment with the middle NA is not as high as users expect.